Mindfulness in Bangkok: Three men serendipity, the seduction of money and maggots

With one day of getting used to my deafness, I decided to go for it and continue my trip (travelling around Thailand on sabbatical) as planned rather than hide out and wait til I could hear again. Great idea! Fortunately I met two really nice women from French Canada. We travelled to Bangkok and met three men. 

Man one told us the temples were closed in the morning and to do a boat trip. 'Only pay Thai price!' he said. Arriving at the boat yard, Thai price was tourist price so we bailed and decided to walk to other temples nearby and go with the flow. At this moment, we met man two uwho told us it was indeed a special day in Bangkok and tuk tuks were just $1 all day and that the temple with the 'lucky Buddha' - normally not seen by tourists was open today. Only day in the year! On our cheap as chips tuk tuk we go to see the lucky Buddha (which was really cool) where we meet man three. 

Man three is surprised to see tourists and in talking, he tells us he has just been to something called 'Thai expo' where for this week only you can buy previous jewels tax free. He spent a lot (!) of money and is taking his family to Australia to sell them for a profit and pay for their holiday.So off we trot in our tuk tuk to an exclusive jewellery shop where the seduction of money starts. To buy or not to buy? More on that later. 

My new friend decides to buy herself a very nice ring and then monsoon starts. Rain, more rain, more rain. The jewellery store realising we just have a tuk tuk, then offers us a complimentary luxury private mini van and our own tour guide to take us to all of the remaining sites in Bangkok!!! Then on top of that, they take us to the main sites of Bangkok. Score!

So - about the seduction of money. When presented with the possibility of making a completely legal fast buck, I realised later just how seduced by money I had been. I didn't buy but couldnt get the idea out of my head about the possibility of making some money. You know when you just can't stop thinking about something...round and round in your head it goes. 

This got me thinking about thinking about something I read that said - saying to yourself 'stop thinking about it' - is actually another thought about it. To get out of the loop - when the thought comes, just watch it come and let go of it. You could focus on your breath for example and this helps the incessant thinking to lose its grip. And if you think of it again, again let it go - as many times as it takes. This takes some getting used to and I find sometimes that a dollop of rationale can help in tough cases of mind looping. 

My rationale for not buying was that it could potentially ruin my trip to carry something so valuable. What sense would it make to try and make money but then decrease the 'value' (pleasure, joy, experience) of the money I was currently spending on this trip. Sure - I might make some money to cover the cost of this trip but the experience of the trip would have been worsened as I am sure I would have felt paranoid about losing the stone. How often in life are we presented with this choice? You often hear of people changing jobs to make more money despite longer hours or more travel time. They are less happy each day but have more money. How much of our enjoyment of our 'present moment' are we willing to sacrifice - for more money that is supposed to contribute to increasing our happiness of our 'present moments'? It's madness.

As I realised that I wasn't paying as much attention to the temples as I wanted to be I chuckled to myself about the irony. If I made more money, what would I do? For sure, I would travel to somewhere like Thailand to check out the temples! Upon realising how ridiculous it was to be seduced by money which I would spend only to have the experience that I was currently paying to have - my incessant thinking about making money ended. And the temples were amazing! 

And then the next morning I ate my favourite lychees only to find maggots in them. Not sure that relates to any of the above - only in that 'paying full attention' to what you are doing is not just good for getting the most out of temples- it's also a good idea in a country where there's the possibility of there being maggots in your food! :)

1 wk til Vipasanna. 1 wk into the sabbatical: The great, the good, the hard and the sucks!

The practice: I'm up to 2 hours practice at 5.30am and what can I say - its a cross between a delight and a mission. So a bit like life really! Delight because its two hours to just be. Not do. Or try to be someone different, better. Just be. And all I need to do to 'be' is breathe, watch my thinking and learn about my relationship with my mind. By doing this, one of the things that is happening is that I'm also building up the ability to bring my attention to where I want it to be. During the practice this is on the breath but in life - wow, this is a powerful tool. To be able to pay attention - in the moment - and get the most out of it - it is like time is eternal. It doesn't rush past, I'm not feeling like I'm missing out. I'm there with it - the good, the bad and the ugly. Not always, of course, but the more time I spend meditating, the longer my life feels! That doesnt mean I recommend 2 hours a day - just 10-15 mins can make a difference and 40 mins was really good too.

So - back to the mission part of Vipasanna prep. It hurts. After 1.5 hours, the ankles and knees start to hurt. And this is where  it gets interesting. In life, we want to avoid pain - or any uncomfortable feeling actually. We try to change the situation. Or we avoid it with a drink, a fag, a chocolate bar, a distraction. The challenge is that when we avoid the feeling, we stay on the run. The alternative is to let ourselves experience the emotion. Pain is often temporary, it changes in nature and we have a choice - believe it or not - of how we want to relate to it. I wrote about pain the last blog post so for more on this - go back one blog!

The pros of solo travelling: I've spent six days alone (bar a few day trips) and I'm really enjoying it. In some ways this worries me! Will I get too used to this? But mostly I just think that the gift of time to unwind, and then unwind some more and then realise you can unravel because you don't have to go back (for a while) and I feel free to create, think, question, explore in a way that I rarely get time to. Its space.

I've also met cool people and as is common when travelling, I've spent time with people that I wouldn't normally. They have been great and interesting and add a lot of colour to the trip.

I also realise human tendencies such as being judgemental and making comparisons. I notice when I do this now and there is a lot said about this in the books and videos I have been watching. It seems it is one of the curses on our happiness. I've had a lot of space in this trip to explore why we 'compare' and here's what I've come to understand: 

There are a million ways that we can  compare ourselves to others and millions of people to compare ourselves to. Every minor victory 'I'm better at this or that' - I'm so glad I'm not like them etc - is a bit like gambling. You do feel like you 'win' some but it's set up for you to lose in the end. The very act of gambling, or judging, means that you will always feel inferior because there will always be someone that does something better, has more etc. It's the act of feeling like you need to compare or judge to justify your self worth that keeps you from feeling worthy. So the solution? Find happiness in what other people have and in what you have in turn. Acknowledge judgements when they come - as they surely will - but just register them as thoughts that don't define who you are. Number the judgements if that helps. It reminds you of how fleeting thoughts actually are if you just let them come and go and not set up home. In time, they will quieten, reduce or even stop. And ultimately - work on accepting yourself for who you are. The good, the bad  - oh and the sucks. 

So the sucks is that my ears got infections so no hearing aids for one week. Which means travelling around Thailand with partial hearing. Bit like having ear plugs in all the time. Ho hum.

Deep breaths and letting it be...I'm sure compared to 10 days of silence, this will seem easy!

Ps if you are interested in some of the material I'm reading/watching while on sabbatical and want to learn more about mindfulness, happiness, Buddhism, insight meditation or yoga then keep an eye on the resources page where it says 'new'. There will be three books, a few great videos etc that I will upload when next in an Internet cafe.

Some videos on Happiness (TED)

Dan Gilbert gives an interesting explanation of how little we understand about happiness!

Matthieu Ricard gives a wonderful simple and clear explanation of what happiness is.

Inspiration from Steve Jobs - a Zen Buddhist

This morning I watched Steve Job's commencement address at Stanford. Never has a 15 minute speech resonated with me so much. He tells us - 'Don't settle!', find what you are passionate about, don't let other's opinion drown out your inner voice, follow your heart and intuition.

Many have said things like this before, but the reality is that this is hard to do. It takes heaps of courage. Inner strength. Confidence. Balls.

It doesn't surprise me that Steve Jobs is Buddhist. Or that he felt strongly about incorporating mindfulness and meditation into Apple. He believed in investing in people - and investing in their mental health.

We easily spend time and money on our bodies, our appearance, exterior things. But the strength to follow our passions, our hearts, our intuition and not settle for anything less - can only come from investing in our minds.

It is an inspiring 15 minutes.

One of my biggest fears: dying having never really lived

Fearing death is understandable. Not many people talk about it lightly and it feels weird to think about not being here one day. However, a bigger fear for me is dying feeling that I didn't live my life fully. The Dalai Lama says that the thing that surprised him most about humanity was man ,

"Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices his money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present: the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die and then dies having never really lived." 

Now that is a scary thought! That freaks me out much more than the idea of dying itself!

So what does it mean to live you life fully? I read something (which annoyingly I can't find the reference for) that if we only spend a couple of hours everyday actually being 'in the present moment' instead of thinking about the past or the future, or being on autopilot and not really engaging fully in what we are doing then this means that we actually only have about 6 years left of being really present. That doesn't sound like very long to me!!

There isn't anything wrong with being on autopilot sometimes, or thinking about the past or the future. That is a mis-understanding of what being 'mindful is'. What is helpful is to be more aware of these things and make more choices about when we want to be in these states. There are some activities in life which people are drawn to because they connect us with the present moment - sky diving (for damn sure you won't be day dreaming during that experience!), racing a fast car or other adventure sports, eating something you love, taking drugs. People are often drawn to these experiences because they are fresh, exciting, they make us feel really alive. It is this quality of 'feeling really alive' that mindfulness helps us bring to more of our lives. Why not have that connection to the present everyday from more 'regular' activities. Having a really nice shower and feeling the warm water on our skin instead of our mind moving forward to conversation that you will have with your colleagues about the programme you watched last night. Or eating your breakfast and tasting more than the first two mouthfuls before your mind wanders off to what time it is and all the things you have to do before leaving the house. There is a lot we can experience in an average day and perhaps being more aware, connecting more with each of those things - might just add some more years on to how much of life we really live.

For a little exercise on connecting more or being more aware of an experience - there is a post on the 'raisin exercise' (see blog topics on the right of this blog).

Lessons from Tolle: Being enough as you are

Do you ever have the feeling of not being enough as you are? Or feeling like there is something missing? Do those thoughts affect what you buy, what you wear, what you choose to do with your time - how many qualifications you get, the job/professional success and recognition you seek, the relationships you get into?

Eckhart Tolle says:

"Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated send of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people this is conscious, in others unconscious. If it is conscious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconscious, it will only be felt indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case, people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel. So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete. But even when they attain all these things, they soon find that the hole in still there, that it is bottomless. They they are really in trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore." The Power of Now', Eckhart Tolle, pg 37

I don't think that this means that it is not good to be successful, learn things or engage in special relationships. Instead it is more about the intention you have behind this. Is it with an aim of trying to feel complete, better about yourself, fill a 'hole' or is it genuine curiosity and desire to learn and experience things?

Through mindfulness, the intention is to just be and for that to be enough and to spot and be aware of when the mind has other plans. I find this very interesting and will blog more about this and related themes in the future....

Learning 'Not to think about it'

What do you do when you have something on your mind that you just can't stop thinking about? Even if you don't want to and you say to yourself - 'right - I'm not going to think about it anymore!' - it just seems to come back to you and stay there - like a song that you get stuck in your head which you can't seem to get rid of.

I read an answer to this challenge yesterday. It's a rather annoyingly simple and yet challenging answer:

"We have to learn the paradox that to want not to think about something is in fact to be thinking about that something: and that as long as we think that it is an effort to discard undesirable thought or habits we make it an effort". (The Dhammapada, pg 31)

Wow! Annoyingly true. Here is what I understand this to mean: when we want or don't want something this implies that we have thought about it (in order to judge it as good and therefore something we want, or something bad and that we don't want). If we are then 'not wanting' then we are thinking. If we 'don't want to think' then we are in fact thinking. When the thought comes into our minds, if we put more thought into it like saying to ourselves 'I don't want to be thinking about this' then we are doing just that - we are thinking about it. So - how do we get out of this loop? Well, the answer to that is to not resist that the thought comes - unfortunately - we don't have that kind of control. Instead, we have to let the thought come but then not give it any attention by thinking about whether we want the thought to be there or not. We just watch it/be aware of it and then it is likely to pass. 

This is a surprisingly obvious thing to do and yet it is so difficult because we are not used to understanding how our thinking works. It takes us on a journey all the time from one thing to the next without us really paying much attention to who or what is in control. By meditating, we learn to watch thoughts come and go and not get sucked into them and be carried off on a train of thought from one thing to the next. Quite cool when you think about it! 

Fear of Achievement - A Poetic Reminder

A wise Fisherman sent me a link to this quote as aspiration to not limit what I can achieve and believe in myself. I find that the sentence 'There's nothing enlightened about shrinking' to be very powerful. It is hard to feel like you could 'be someone' or fulfill a dream. But as the poem says, we have our own light to shine and that light can also help other people to allow their light to shine...And that is motivation enough!

Our Deepest Fear

By Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us;
It's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we're liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

Happiness distilled in a sentence

"Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions." 

Matthieu Ricard

I understand this to mean that happiness is not actually about 'doing' or 'having'. Of course, the feeling of happiness can arise when we do things - eat ice cream, win a proposal or make a sale at work, have a glass of wine (no coincidence that I choose these!). It certainly feels good to buy things our selves. The difference is that this type of happiness is fleeting - it comes and goes. If we observe the feeling as we experience, we notice that it often changes over time, maybe the feeling becomes less strong, maybe it is followed by a dip or another consequence (feeling sick after too much ice cream or drinking too much wine).

So - if true happiness is in our 'being' - what does that mean? This is the type of happiness which doesn't come from anything external. In fact, it doesn't even come from our thinking. It is a deeper acceptance of who we are - without needing the bells and whistles of a nice car, phone or an event to make us feel better, or important.

'Coming to Our Senses' with Jon Kabat Zinn

This video may seem from the start to be slightly old fashioned music and images, but don't be put off. Once Jon Kabat Zinn starts talking (which takes a few minutes as there is an introduction by someone else) - it is a captivating, succinct and poignant summary of mindfulness and particularly 'coming to our senses'. Well worth a watch if you have any interest in mindfulness.

My favourite point he makes is about being in the shower. Where are you when you are in the shower? Think about your shower today. Where were you? Were you having an argument with a co-worker? Were you in a meeting about something which is taking up a lot of thinking at the moment? Were you planning your day?

This is just a small example to illustrate auto-pilot. What about the sensation of the water as it hits our skin? The sensation of warmth or cold (depending on how you like your showers!). What about just experiencing that for a moment and being where you are - IN THE SHOWER! There are lots of things to enjoy and experience about every moment of our day - including what we might consider small things like having a shower. But if we can't have one for a while, we soon appreciate them. What about appreciating it as we experience it? Imagine how great the day could be if we spent more time experiencing what we was actually happening in each moment and less time in the past or future which doesn't exist anymore/yet.

Learning presentation skills

What make Jon Kabat Zinn such as great speaker? Here are some of the things he does during the presentation to make it engaging: 

• uses poetry and quotes to add 'colour' to the talk
• puts learning point into an everyday context
• engages with the audience and asks people to do things
• asks questions and put your hands up
• speaks clearly, good pace and is calm - as well as very well timed!
• uses humour

Practice makes perfect!

Turning towards instead of away from difficulties - The Case of the Annoying Customer Service Girl

One of the key learnings of mindfulness is turning towards rather than away from our reality - whether it be good or bad. So, for example, books on mindfulness often talk about 'pain'. If we are in pain - then be in pain. Be aware of the pain. Watch it. Perhaps it will shift in nature - sometimes it may be stronger, sometimes less painful. Rather than trying to distract ourselves from it, ignore it or get frustrated or angry - wishing things could be different, face it.

I was interested in how this idea of 'turning towards' reality could be applied to other aspects of life. And today I had a good opportunity to practice this learning point.

Every morning I go to the gym and recently there has been a new girl behind reception. So I arrive at 7.30 - slightly dozey and not up for speaking to anyone and I get greeted with. "Good morning!  How are you today?". Same every day. I don't know her. We have never had a conversation and I feel terrible for saying this but I find this level of niceness very annoying! Then she started to use my name too - 'How are you today Paula? Like something out of a text book customer service training manual. Ugh.

I pondered what to do. Should I say something? But then what would I say? She isn't doing anything wrong and if I did say something I would certainly offend her and make her feel uncomfortable around me and then I would feel bad so that didn't sound like a good idea either. Ducking into the gym without seeing her was also not an option.

So this morning on the way to the gym, I was thinking about this idea of turning towards reality and not fighting it or turning my back on it. I wondered what 'acceptance' would look like in this case. I realised that one way to accept my reality was to engage more with her rather than try and engage less.

So, I walked into the gym and immediately said, 'Hey, how are you? How was your Christmas? Did you have a break?' From this, we had our first actual normal conversation and it was quite nice! The issue for me was mainly that I find it annoying when people are overly nice as part of customer service. But it felt fine once I opened myself up to actually having a normal conversation with her and crossing over into more communication rather than trying to reduce the amount of words that we shared.

With mindfulness often comes insight and a new way of thinking about things. It was a funny bit of karma too as I had forgotten my gym card and the policy is that if you forget your card then you can't get in. Perhaps because of our nice chat, she let me in anyway. So - even if things are hard and we want to push them away, perhaps there is benefit in turning towards them and some good can even come of it!

Fill vs Fulfill

In the book - 'Teaching Mindfulness', it talks about the idea of filling vs fulfilling. This is discussed in the context of training mindfulness in terms of it being important for the trainer not to fill the class with content and jeopardise the experience of exploring mindfulness and exploring what naturally and spontaneously arises (see the 'overlearning' post for more on this).

I see many parallels here with life itself. I recently went to India for three weeks on my own and for the first time, resisted the temptation to fill the holiday with a day to day plan. Instead, I arrived and I went with the flow - reacting in the moment to opportunities, people, navigating decisions about what to do next and with whom. It was indeed very fulfilling because space was available to learn more about myself and others. However, this is easy to do on holiday - so what about home life? How much of that do we fill with things and how much of it do we spend time fulfilling and being fulfilled? How many of things we really want to do - do we actually do?

In this culture of living at speed, earning money, buying things, promotions etc - is our happiness being jeopardised without us realising it? Is there enough 'fulfilling' going on? What do we do with our time and how would we categorise it - filling time with no or only short lived benefit or fulfilling time contributing to a deeper state of happiness?

Coming back to training - on any topic - this would also be an interesting exercise for reviewing session plans. Are there parts of the session plans where we are filling in time with content? How much of the content is fulfilling the learning objectives and if so, how? Is the course so full with content that there isn't much room for spontaneity and reacting in the moment?

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/213285209/">jurvetson</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>

What else are we missing?

"It is easy not to spot the the small changes because you already know what to expect. Did you spot the second 'the' in the previous sentence?" (Teaching Mindfulness)

Most of us are well versed in the key to communication being listening and we talk about it in courses on management and relationship building. What we don't necessarily talk about is the way our minds work and the effect they have on our ability to be fully present and aware. Our minds often make judgements about what is being said which can lead to an internal dialogue. They tend to move into the future - thinking about what to say next or move into the past, thinking about what was said before and not what is being said now.

The act of listening is also an act of quietening our own minds - lessening the internal chatter and making space for whatever is being communicated to us - verbally and non-verbally. From this, we widen our understanding of the other person, we gain new insight into what they are communicating - picking up on subtleties, and we can respond more spontaneously.

This takes practice and the first step is perhaps just noticing the judgements as they arise and/or noticing whether we are drifting into thoughts about the future or past as someone speaks. Once we have, we can then tune into what is actually being said and spot the difference.

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/catnipcat/7157542418/">Catnip Cat by Jeff Hoyle</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>